My (ig)noble experiment has now drawn to a close, and I am once again off the wagon. This month proved more difficult than I'd anticipated, but I managed to abstain despite long summer evenings, an extended July 4th celebration, a visit to the Brooklyn Brewery, a weekend trip to DC, the death of a family member, and even a six-pack of O'Doul's.
What did I gain? Aside from a few extra dollars in my pocket not much, though any fears of potentially becoming an alcoholic have dissipated, which is nice. Thanks to everyone for their support and temptation, except for my roommate, who decided making it 29 days satisfied the terms of our mutual-sobriety pact and broke down Thursday night.
When it comes to media, men 18 to 34 like things fresh, unpredictable, and uncensored.
So what you're saying is that your article wasn't targeted at men 18 to 34? Oh, snap! Actually what we love is blanket generalizations and pieces about advertising that sound like advertisements. It gets us hot, collectively.
I place the belt and white dress shirt on the counter for checkout with a shame I've felt many times before. I hate the homogeneity of this place, how everything is juuuust stylish enough for evenings out but still innocuous enough for the workplace. Clothes for the unimaginative urbanite. The gentleman's C of modern fashion. The #1 safety school for business casual applicants. My first boss remarked once that looking around our office was like browsing the pages of a Banana Republic catalog, and I hate proving her right. I can get a belt and shirt almost anywhere, probably of better quality, certainly for less money, but today I'm just too exhausted.
The employee at the cash register is quite the talker. He begins our conversation with a fairly absurd question.
"Say sir, do you watch 'television'?" This is the way he says it, with air-quotes around "television", as if uncertain how to pronounce it. I am nonplussed, wondering if it's a trick question.
"I... Well, about as much as the next man I guess, why?"
"Ever see the commercial for phones where there's a guy with signal bars over his head, and they start to fade, and he asks the woman with plenty of bars above her head if he can use her phone?"
I shake my head negative.
"Oh, well he's wearing your shirt."
The reason he knows this is because the shirt I am wearing, in addition to the shirt I am standing in line to purchase, is one of theirs. And not just from the same chain, but from this location, because despite having probably fifty different locations in Manhattan alone, the last time I had the ignominious pleasure of giving them money was in this very store, one register to the left of where he's now rubbing my face in the fact that his company has monopolized my entire wardrobe as a result of laziness or apathy on my part. As he punctuates his observation with an obsequious smile, my humiliation is complete.
Normally, I might have found this amusing, in a self-schadenfreude kind of way, but not today. I nod, defeated.
"I'll keep an eye out for it," I say, trying to end the exchange. He has other plans.
"So did you buy this belt because it's reversible or-"
"Look, I bought it because I have to go to a funeral and I just need to get a new shirt and belt for the services. I honestly don't care if it's reversible." The instant I say this, I know it's a mistake. He apologizes and very deferentially goes about the remainder of his check-out routine, delicately wrapping both items and announcing the total in a quiet voice. It's larger than I expected. Signing the credit card receipt I note the belt I'd chosen in my haste is exceedingly expensive, explaining his inquisitiveness. I deeply regret unloading on him, infecting him with my emotional burden.
As I turn to leave he tells me to feel better. I don't. I feel much worse than when I entered.
***
I grew up for the most part with one brother in drought-plagued southern California. Every summer we'd fly with my mother back to her home state of New Jersey, where her entire family still resided. My grandfather outlived his first wife, with whom he'd fathered several children, married my grandmother, who herself came from a large family, and raised three more daughters, leaving a complex and vast network of relatives cris-crossing the entire Garden State. Each visit I'd be introduced to half-uncles and second cousins I'd never heard of before and haven't seen since. The core group of relatives - the ones we primarily went to see during these month-long annual trips - remained steady. My grandmother, a widow since my grandfather's death in the 1950's, welcomed us into her cozy single-bedroom apartment and ensured that our bellies were stocked full of black cherry jello and french toast. A few blocks down the road, my mother's younger sister lived with her husband and their two children while in the neighboring township my mother's older sister had taken over the house in which the three of them were raised, also with her husband and two children.
To a kid bored to tears by the summer doldrums, these vacations were supernovas of social entertainment, complete with an alien landscape. The houses, ancient and made of brick, were the sites of huge dinners stretching on late into the night, fireflies - a serious novelty - still dotting the humid air. "Bedtime" seemed not to apply there. The six cousins played wiffle-ball and Marco Polo, and no matter how often I ran over the grass to second base (the white light post next to the swing set), I never could comprehend how it got so green. We would pile into my uncle's car for trips to get milkshakes, and run upstairs upon returning to play cards or Nintendo. If that weren't all-American enough, a few years we timed our stay to coincide with July 4th, resulting in awed fireworks viewings and day-long backyard barbeques.
I never wanted to leave. Each time we touched back down in LA, and the pilot would reverse the thrust of the engines to facilitate braking, I'd imagine he was throttling up to immediately take off again. I pretended he'd come on the intercom and announce that, due to some bizarre equipment malfunction, we'd have to turn around and head back (this, I later learned, is not the typical reaction people have after having left New Jersey). I always noted that, tailwind aside, the flights there went by more quickly than the flights back.
As much as I and my brother enjoyed those trips though, I know now they were far more important to my mother. Living in self-imposed ostracism, three thousand miles away from her entire family and home, the hours spent catching up in person were irreplaceable. She'd say how she always imagine her and her two sisters growing into old ninnies together, gossiping and sharing in each other's insufferable company.
***
My mother passes the phone to my father, who asks me where I am. I reply that I'm in Washington DC for the weekend, at a pal's house, grilling outdoors and watching a group of guys play Texas hold-em. I tell him I've had a great time, strolling around the monuments at night and visiting with good friends, that the weather's been fantastic and the food even better. He tells me to speak up, as he almost always does.
I am now more than ever conscious of my parents' growing older, and I want direly to respond that mom didn't have any trouble understanding me and that he needs to get his hearing checked, that I know he's been having a little trouble for a while now, because mom's told me so even though he's too reticent to share it with my brother and myself, that it's been a problem ever since he slipped on a patch of ice and hit his head outside a hospital visiting my mother who was undergoing treatment battling cancer, a battle which she won and which her older sister, she has just informed me, lost tonight.
The family hid it from my grandmother. She'd already lost a husband, sister, and brother to cancer, not to mention the rest of her siblings and even some step children to various other causes. No use scaring her by saying she might lose a daughter as well. A good intention to be sure, and maybe a good strategy if the danger had passed, but it did not, and she stayed in the dark until now. I want to say something about this too.
Instead I clear my throat and speak louder. I repeat only that I'm in DC for the weekend, and omit everything else.
***
We engage in varying levels of symbiosis with those around us, emotionally, professionally, monetarily, in other ways as well - there's a quid pro quo in place for every relationship in our lives ranging from tacit to explicit, from vague to unambiguous. They are rarely equitable, at least objectively. I could fill pages listing what I got from my Aunt, but I'm not quite sure what I gave back to her. The dynamic between extended relatives is complicated, and usually tilted in the younger's favor, but every time she cooked dinner all I could do was help with the dishes. Whenever a gift arrived with my name on it, a compliment was paid, or some advice drifted my way all I could reciprocate with was a thank you. It seems almost parasitic.
I hope she knew how much those trips meant to me, how much that environment which she was an integral part of creating shaped me, how vivid and lasting the memories of it are.
***
I think now of another experience buying clothes, at the time not much more satisfying than my episode today with the belt, shirt, and gregarious clerk. There's only one decent suit in my closet, purchased for weddings and future job interviews. I'd originally intended the color to be charcoal gray, but put off going to buy it until the only color available for the style I wanted was black. I needed it immediately - one of the cousins who I remember as being particularly good at wiffle-ball was getting hitched, and I couldn't afford to wait. The only consolation I could conjure, half in jest, was that black would work better for funerals. I no longer find that to be much consolation.
A coworker asked me what my dreams were today. She said:
You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?
It's from South Pacific, a musical about fathering children out of wedlock on a deserted island full of randy GIs and Polynesian prostitutes, then dealing with the consequences maturely... in song. She's right though, I need a dream or two, perhaps maybe just a hobby.
Or maybe the dreams I have just aren't dope enough. So I'm announcing the inaugural post of a series I'm calling "Pimp My Dream". It's just like "Pimp My Ride". I bring out my dream, then you guys customize it, and ultimately we have Xzibit show me around highlighting all the bling and trying to calm me down as I'm on the verge of tears (henceforth known as "the saline precipice"). Here's how it might go down:
Me:
I dream of leading a life of public service.
You guys:
Commenter 1: You should be the mayor of a large metropolis. They are well-connected and generally wealthy. Commenter 2: The life of a mayor often involves exciting extra-marital sex. Commenter 3: The woman with whom you conduct an extra-marital affair should be attractive. Commenter 4: If you become mayor, please resume trash pickup on Sundays.
The unveiling:
Xzibit: Check it out, we got this fly mansion over here...
[rapid-fire cut to: exterior of large, stately house - walk-in humidor - butler] Morland: Oh man! X: ...and around back, several satchels of money...
[cut to: huge bags of money with dollar signs on them] M: yo! X: ...that's right dawg, and we dropped this fly mistress on the side...
[cut to: 180-degree quick-pan of bikini-clad hottie in hot tub] M: word! X: ...plus you instituted 7-day trash pickup while still managing to keep a stable budget, which has brought your approval rating up to 76%. M: [with feeling] I love you Xzibit.
See how it works? Fairly straightforward. So let's begin:
I dream of attaining a graduate degree of some sort.
When the annoying marketing gremlin of a major airline interrupts you in the midst of walking back from retrieving lunch and queries whether you'd like your picture taken, at no cost, in front of a Mini Cooper, pimped-out to look like a jet aero-plane, sitting across the street from Madison Square Garden as a stunt in conjunction with the completion of a giant mural by some urbane artist or something, essentially relegating you to the level of corporate shill just to see your picture on their web site... YOU... SAY... YES.
Brent had the calm, continental demeanor expected of a four-star hotel manager. His staid attitude and firm belief in orderliness belied a past that included multiple felonies and the writing of a book entitled "Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned from Taking Painkillers". He was pushing forty, balding, and in need of waterskiing lessons. With no children of his own, Brent doted on his nephew Leonid, whose private-school tuition was paid almost entirely out-of-pocket. The tips from wealthy patrons amounted to far more than a single middle-aged recovering substance-abuser could spend on himself alone, no matter how many private "massages" he ordered to the managerial suite.
On Thursday the twenty-sixth of June, Brent entered the labyrinth that passed for his hotel's system of service hallways through the rear entrance adjacent to the employee parking garage. His collar was asphyxiating in the morning swelter, and the sterile air-conditioned flow that greeted him provided a relief bordering on ecstasy.
As he turned the corner to his office and began removing his skeleton key from his front-right pants pocket, Brent heard a faint squeaking behind him. The meager night staff was not permitted access to this section of the back office, and it was too early for the day shift to have arrived. Shoulders tensed and ready to deliver a thorough scolding, the manager pivoted on the balls of his feet and looked up from the shaky hands that had been fumbling with the key ring.
A clear sealed plastic jar of liquid, five feet in height, sat on the shiny tile floor of the hallway. Despite the cool regulated temperature of the building, condensation formed on its exterior and ran in miniature rivulets, through which he could make out small inscription reading "Property of Ewell Laboratories" in addition to a Mondale/Ferraro bumper sticker, down to the junction of jar and floor. The liquid inside the cylinder must have been quite cold. A shiny trail extended from the jar's present location down the length of the corridor and around a distant corner. Brent suspected the watery friction between the container's base and the tiles must have been the source of the sound he'd heard. But that would have implied movement.
"Hello," a calm voice broke the near silence of the air whistling through both the hallway ventilation ducts and Brent's narrow nostrils, "I am a giant vat of semi-synthetic tetracycline. I represent the next stage of-"
Brent tuned out. He felt his muscles seize and became unusually aware of the icy sensation of sweat, left over from his time spent outside, evaporating off his skin. He had been a sickly child, and was therefore no stranger to medicines of all kinds, antibiotics included. But this tub had somehow developed sentience, and cornered him. Alone.
Before he could think twice, Brent's prison instincts came back to him. He deftly pulled a butterfly knife from his front-left pants pocket and lunged towards the dripping barrel. At over three hundred pounds, the lumbering cask could not dodge his steel quickly enough, and the sharpened blade point punctured its precious hermetic seal. Yellow fluid sprayed forth. His collar no longer a lily-white, the human removed the weapon and rolled to the hallway's edge, panting.
A look approximating carnal satisfaction overcame Brent's face as the tetracycline jug let loose a ululant shriek. Within minutes it was empty, the erstwhile contents coating the floors of the hotel's back office. Humanity: 1, superdrug: 0.
Brent arose and continued about his business, unlocking the door to his office and hanging his suit jacket, drenched and heavy, on his coat rack. He dialed room service and ordered a steak. He had earned his pay today.
Once upon a time I had a goatee, and despite what people thought of it I wore it without shame. You might even say I took no small measure of pride in sporting what I thought to be a handsome facial accessory, though the sagacity of adulthood has mollified somewhat that youthful vanity. Still, some modicum of hirsute braggadocio must linger, for when I spied Jay Farrar's luxuriant chin-strap my ego nearly immolated. The span of it, the insouciant bushiness! What density!
:: When I get writer's block, I get it something wicked
All I could think to write about today was a little micro-hallucination I had just after lunch, which I call "Paramilitary Hipster Dance-Funk Rampage!".
UNGH. GET... GET DOWN!
SMITE 'EM!
SMITE 'EM WITH THEM VINTAGE CLOTHES!
HIDE IT! UH-HUH!
HIDE THAT CACHE OF WEAPONS FROM THE AUTOCRATS!
GOOD GOD Y'ALL! GOT A MAOIST HAT!
WHATCHU THINK O'THAT?
YOU GOTS TO ORGANIZE!
MORE THAN JUST YOUR VINYL COLLECTION!
NOW SCREEEEEAAAAAMMMM!
See, it's this hipster guy, and he's on stage with a funky backup band inciting the comparably hip crowd to band into a citizen's militia by channeling the stage presence of James Brown. I don't know what the impetus is, but apparently it's got to be done - real bad-like - and they've got to look good doing it.
Also, one of the hipsters in the crowd has a tight-fitting lime-green shirt that says "assassins do it from behind" in yellow letters. He/she thinks it's hilarious.
I can't say my past experience with learning foreign languages has been by any account good or even tolerable, but there remains a dim, curious spark within me to reach out to the peoples of this expansive sphere and talk a mile in their larynxes.
No offense to my dear friends the Swedes, but on my personal list of languages to master, Svenska would not be at the top. It would rank somewhere just below Hmong and just above that language Jodi Foster created in Nell, if only because I don't have the patience to learn the accompanying hand gestures.
But there's a gulf between my interest in the language and the people that developed it. What kind of absurd collective cultural genius they must possess to bring Günther & the Sunshine Girls* unto this world. Once again they tap a Euro-dance zeitgeist I did not know existed. I only wish I knew their beauteous language so that I might decipher this enigma.
Watch the video and gaze in wonderment that the Chris Tucker lateral-head-bob from Rush Hour lives on.
*from the hit factory that brought you ABBA, Ace of Base, and Aqua.
"Like cigarette smoke, there is no acceptable dose for UV radiation. Every exposure could have an adverse effect," said Dr. David Leffell, Professor of Dermatology and Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. "While the danger of sun exposure is a year-round issue, we see prolonged exposure in the summer leading to increased sun damage risks. People should still enjoy their time outdoors, but by making a simple behavior change - sun protection every day- they may reduce their risk of developing skin cancer."
"Clearly there is an unmet need for sun safety education, particularly with younger age groups," said Mike Concannon, Vice President of Suncare Marketing from Schering-Plough HealthCare Products, Inc. "This is why Coppertone [the leading suncare brand] is dedicating its resources and energies to raise awareness about the harmful effect of the sun's rays by launching a consumer awareness campaign to help Americans get smart about the sun. As a part of this campaign, we have declared May as Sun Awareness Month."
Agency Rep: Good, that press release is a start, but we need to take it one step farther.
Coppertone Executive: What do you mean? We basically insinuated that failing to use our product and going outdoors is tantamount to a death sentence.
AR: No, we used equivocal terms like "risk" and "could have". In the future, change those to "certain peril" and "will, without the slightest shred of doubt". Also mention that solar radiation has ties to Al Qaeda. And France.
AR: I like the angle you're taking - dark and fear-mongering - but spice it up.
CE: How?
AR: Change "every sunburn increases a child's chance of getting skin cancer as an adult" to "every sunburn makes your child less popular and decreases their chances of admittance into a top-tier college". And replace "I'm an expert - I became one when I had my own skin cancer removed last year" with "I'm an expert - skin cancer assaulted me as I was loading groceries into my minivan, whisked me away to an abandoned factory, silenced me with an asbestos ball-gag, and had its way with me. Now I have mesothelioma and my second child has skin cancer's eyes. I don't dare tell my husband - he's got quite a temper." When she says that last line, make sure she takes of a pair of sunglasses to reveal a nice shiner of a black eye.
CE: That's horrible, we can't in good conscience-
AR: SILENCE. Wait, it's coming to me... "skin cancer has also been implicated in several S&L scandals and the devaluation of the ruble. Skin cancer hates America. NO NEED TO PANIC, BUT IF YOU DO NOT USE OUR PRODUCT YOUR LINEAGE WILL BE DESTROYED IRREVOCABLY. BUY OR FACE THE TOTAL EXTINCTION OF YOUR GENES. BUY OR DIE!"
In the future, when VH1 produces the "I Love the 00s" - at their current pace, this should be sometime next week - will they wax nostalgic for the popular TV series "I love the 70s", "I Love the 80s", and "I Love the 90s"? Would that be so self-referencing as to be uncouth? When will then be now? Soon.
Mobile phones function using different radio protocols with acronyms like AMPS, CDMA, GSM, GPRS, WCDMA, TDMA, iDEN, EDGE, UMTS, CDMA2000, and so on. Today, I found out that these are called either "Three Letter Acronyms" or "Extended Three Letter Acronyms". What's really awesome is that the industry then abbreviates these titles, resulting in TLA or eTLA - acronyms referring to the type of acronym referring to the protocol in question (GSM is a TLA, WCDMA is an eTLA). Sadly, there is no apposite communication protocol called META.
In the World of Denim, an enclave separated from the World of Leather by expanses of water traversed by transverse structures high above or far below the surface tension and isolated from the World of Oxford by clustered layered shoeboxes hectometers in height, it is my understanding that the overuse of denim is meant to signify casualness and simplicity. The natives exude neither. The WoD's secondary characteristic seems to be a pandemic prevalence of Pilates studios. Such physical activity is supplemented by an inhaled white diet powder. To wit: very few WoD residents are overweight.
The major religion is Snarkianity, followed by Media-worship. There are some additional scattered animist cults coalescing around musical performers. Often inhabitants will adopt passive-aggressive methods of criticism, such as complaining about store closings via inter-networked electronic posturing.
A note to historians who may glimpse one day upon these words: in this time and place, common houserats have not yet been domesticated, they roam feral and free. I await the coming age of human-rodent communion.
I bought a Palm V PDA in 1999. It was top-of-the-line then, with a blazing fast 33-mhz "Dragonball" processor and expansive 160x160 pixel monochrome screen. I put it to good use too, storing up contact information and downloading news to read in a small darkened room while showing college freshmen clips of "Halloween" and "America's Funniest Home Videos". But it quickly succumbed to the rapid change inherent in its industry, and a couple years later it was junk. Now I have a Treo 600 with an "ARM" processor five times as fast and a color screen. Plus it's a phone to boot.
No one bats an eye at this. First there was unavoidable obsolescence, then designed obsolescence. Now there's presumed obsolescence. Needs change, available solutions change, costs change.
Take the apartment building I stare at from my living room window as an example: the needs - the base living requirements - serviced by that building to its residents have not changed dramatically in the past fifty years. The supply of alternatives is vast - should one absolutely require an elevator, one may simply up and move (well, perhaps nothing is "simple" when it comes to the real estate market in my neighborhood, but still...). The cost of either upgrading the existing units or razing and reconstructing the whole building is enormously expensive. The end result is a marginally obsolete structure (no elevator, built-in A/C, and so forth) with a sufficient number of substitutes to make renovation or reconstruction unjustifiable given the expense. The landlords lust after the higher rents they could charge for those shiny new spaces but realize modernizing has its costs and they have a steady income as it stands. Stasis it is.
Normally substitutes offer incentive to compete. If Coke tastes better, Pepsi gets to work saturating their syrup with more sugar and secret spices. Yet it's important here to remember that unlike electronics, cars, and soft drinks, the number of takers for Manhattan real estate is for all intents and purposes infinite, making the demand shockingly inelastic (i.e. unaffected by shifts in price point and quality). Produce a shoddy dishwasher and your sales will drop. Put a 200 square-foot basement studio apartment / rat-burrow on the market for $1000 a month on the corner of Wooster and Prince and it will be leased in a matter of hours.
Airports are immensely fascinating in that they are subjected in a singular manner to the interplay of all the forces above. Airports are, with rare exceptions, local monopolies (even the three largest cities in the U.S., all of which have multiple international airports, stratify them to target differentiated clusters of routes) operating in what is nationally and internationally a hyper-competitive market. Even while fighting fiercely for domestic cargo routes, the same airport may fail to address myriad international customer (either the airlines or their passengers) complaints despite no shortage of substitutes, relying on the inexhaustible demand for overseas travel. Each must cater to tourists and businesspeople staying for a brief while, locals who will pass through dozens of times each year, and passengers transferring flights who will never set foot outside the terminal, and may well never return. The rate of industrial change is not as breakneck as mobile phones or semiconductors, but it is constant and pressing. New planes require wider runways, security enhancements necessitate physical reconfiguration, and the evolving practical concerns of travelers (Wi-Fi access, modern parking structures) must be catered to. Almost every change brings with it a burdensome cost, but none more so that expansion or relocation. To paraphrase 50 cent, airports love space like a fat kid love cake, and that space has become increasingly rare. Acquiring new land on which to build has become a financial impossibility. Only one major airport and 19 new runways have been built in the entire United States in the past 25 years. Yet they can't just stand still.
So airports renovate. And remodel. And rebuild. But they never replace themselves entirely. They simply can't afford to fall back on the old American panacea of sprawling outward to the frontier, or tossing out that old Palm V in the garbage. Resource scarcity, like the residents of the apartment building across the my alley, keeps them where they are, but encroaching obsolescence, like my PDA situation, motivates them to upgrade constantly. They straddle a deep divide, impossibly static and irrepressibly dynamic. People could learn a thing or two from airports (coincidentally there's been only one of me built in the last 25 years as well).
I've always considered myself fairly agnostic when it comes to... well, I guess most things. Preference in computer operating systems is no exception. I've had the chance to play around with almost every OS out there, and have installed many of them on the various x86 boxes I've owned, from DOS to Windows XP to Red Hat Linux to BeOS. I love poking around to see how the different interfaces and underlying components operate.
Now I get to play around with OS X as well, thanks to my shiny new 12" Powerbook.
Any hypothesis that human nature tends towards temperance as a default must contend with an Achilles heel in the form of addiction. Some fill basements with wines, others fill veins with black tar heroin.
Fast cars don't interest me,
I'll take my electric adding machine,
Keep those stamps and haute Gucci,
Just set me up with some 802.11g.
I wish I'd succumbed to a less expensive habit, but once I crack open that sucker in an Alphabet City coffee shop and the girls come a runnin', I'll know it was worth it.
Mine has been a fairly comfortable existence objectively. I've lived the coddled life of an upper-middle-class prepster free from the crushing responsibility of having to raise children or ultimately make ends meet. There have been no past-due statements, no alimony suits, no back-alley abortions in my past, just summer internships, college applications, and the pursuit of frequent-flyer miles. I've set myself up for the long coast into retirement and beyond; despite having misguided punk-rock ambitions to bar brawl and passing fantasies of stalking the elusive chevrotain on the Malay peninsula, I seem to be navigating a steady coarse due bland by comfy-bland. I won't shed any tears. My kids will have braces and Air Jordan MCMV's and I'm ok with that, even if I won't be the dad breaking out the scar he got from single-handedly subduing a rabid Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (who, having become power-mad at the 2014 G10 summit after injecting himself with a secret Bundeswehr performance-enhancing serum, will rampage through the idyllic village of Peoria Illinois, uprooting trees and buying every available title on Oprah's book club [which, in the year 2014, will have subsumed all other book clubs as well as most public libraries and even some regional branches of Arby's] from stores along his swath of destruction/spending) at the neighborhood bbq's.
There's a tie though, that binds us bourgeois drones with the abject poor and the idle rich. Not to put too fine a point on it, but: booze.
Since around my 18th birthday, perhaps even before that, I haven't gone a single week without consuming an alcoholic beverage of some kind, and I do not believe my situation to be atypical amongst my peers. Don't get me wrong, I mind it very little, but the temptation to buck the trend had become irresistible. Can I muster the willpower to abstain from all alcoholic consumption for a month? If I can shove off the rummy yoke of social convention, is there a chance I might escape the Sisyphean routine awaiting me these next few decades (short answer: no)?
It is with no small amount of trepidation then that I officially announce, one week into the month in question, Dry July. Do not fear, I will later compensate with the Bender in September, but tempt me no more until August.
Totally unrelated: what's everybody up to on Saturday night, 7/31, about 11:59 pm?
This is the second time O&A have hospitably welcomed throngs of twentysomethings up to their bucolic mansion on the Connecticut river. With a little help from Mr. Blue Sky, egregious quantities of fireworks, and total lack of riverdancing on my part, a good time ensued.
There are two very cogent reasons not to write what I'm about to write.
1) "Open letters" as writing devices are collectively a crutch.
2) The topic to which this open letter pertains is fairly played out.
Here is my rebuttal:
1) Writing? You think I have writing standards? You're crazy. You so crazy they should come cart you away to the loony bin with all the other crazy people who have crazy dentures and write crazy haiku with their own feces and have crazy roundtable discussions about the merits of pecan butter vs. pistachio butter and their effects on the devaluation of the crazy Argentinian peso - the wackiest currency on earth.
2) I don't care if it's played out, I'm riled up. In fact, I'm so apoplectic that I'm going to break a long-standing policy and drop a f-bomb proxy so thinly veiled as to be unambigious (as opposed to say, "&!@#*" - I think when using a symbolic proxy for a curse word the "@" is sacrosanct, so I'm going to keep that, but all other symbols are hereby discarded in an act of such temerity that I may live to regret it).
So I'm writing an open letter. It will be short.
An open letter to logy hipsters:
Did you find yourself at Irving Plaza last night? Did you notice that there was a Hip-hop / UK Garage show featuring Dizzee Rascal and The Streets? Furthermore, did you notice that the music was very lound and indescribably booty-shaking? See, I noticed that you noticed it, because I saw you slowly nodding your head in acknowledgement, and maybe even reserved, cautious, dare I say jaded, approval. And that's all you did.
DANCE MOTHERF@CKERS! I mean it. Just because I have an aversion to denim and you to unironic polo shirts doesn't mean we have to be enemies.
I know this has been expressed before. I just had to vent.
